no longer amusing

[rikibeth]

The smouse infestation has gotten to the point where we can no longer comfortably ignore it, although the smice have yet to invade our pantry.

Resident in the household is one 17-year-old cat, who shows no interest in chasing the critter.

Havahart traps, snap traps, glue traps, or poison?

Discuss.

Comments

[gailmom.livejournal.com]

Glue traps are needlessly cruel, and really gross...don't do that.

Havahart traps are ok, but you have to go FAR away to get rid of it, or it will just come back.

Snap traps work, as long as you are dealing with smice and not rats (once one rat gets caught, the others learn to avoid it...rats is s.m.r.t.)

If you go with poison, which does work very well and doesn't require you to handle the mice, get the kind that makes them thirsty...they leave your place looking for water, then die outside...instead of in your walls (which reeks).

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

it's definitely smice, not rats -- we have seen the smouse, and it is of the adorable big-eyed field smouse sort.

Is the poison packaged in ways that will keep it from the cat?

[goddessfarmer.livejournal.com]

my first choice would be a younger cat, preferably female - say 6mo to 2 years. After that, any kind of trap you personally can stomach emptying. poison would be OK, if you can deliver it to the mice and not the cat, and not have the cat try to eat the dead mice if/when they come out.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I cannot afford the veterinary costs associated with adopting a second cat. The cat is barely interested in wet food, so I suspect dead mice would be of little interest. I think I could put it under the cabinets where the cat can't reach.

[gailmom.livejournal.com]

depends on the brand...but yes, some are available in tamper proof packages to keep your pets out...just make sure to get some labeled for use indoors.

Really, the snap trap is the most reliable "don't end up with dead smouse in the wall" method, but it does require you to both find places the cat won't bother it and handle the carcass...which some people have difficulty with.

[alchemine.livejournal.com]

Snap traps are gross, but at least they get it over with quickly, so that's what I'd probably use. Glue traps are awful because the mice squeal and cry when they get caught -- ILs used them once when we lived with them briefly, and we were all woken in the night by the horrible noise. Then you have to either kill them yourself or take them outside and leave them to die a slow death of thirst/starvation, neither of which are appealing.

Oh, and I wouldn't do poison under any circumstances. Dead mice in the walls smell to high heaven. I ought to know, we've got one right now. Ugh.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

If your neighbors have 6 cats you don't have to take them very far with the havahart traps. Um, not that I would ever do a thing like putting mice in the neighbor's yard. Nowadays. (We had mucho mice when I was in college)

Peanut butter makes a good bait.

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

I suppose borrowing a mouser would put a lot of stress on your resident cat?

Snap traps are generally the most humane way to really get rid of mice, and we usually bait them with peanut butter. Glue traps are a nightmare.

[mandolinjen.livejournal.com]

I had good lucks with something like this when we had mice in a house I was renting.

http://www.backyardstyle.com/shop/index.php?page=shop-flypage-23557

The landlady asked us to start with live traps, but they didn't catch anything in a few weeks. Peanut butter in one of these caught a mouse within a day ... and the cover meant our cat couldn't get at the trap, nor later at the dead mouse.

[ghilledhu.livejournal.com]

Glue traps are horrible. I remember we put them out at the Parabola office, and one of them caught a mouse behind my desk. Poor trapped mousie squeaked so pathetically that I spent close to an hour working to get it free, while the entire office gathered around to watch. (This ended when someone thought to bring rubbing alcohol so it didn't keep re-sticking itself.)

The glue traps disappeared very quickly after that. Apparently mice in glue traps die of fear or starvation.

I'd say snaps if you don't mind dead mousies, havaharts if you do.

[bunnygoth.livejournal.com]

As someone who has often lived with mice: Don't do the glue traps...they're cruel, and finding a slowly dying mouse is just horribly unpleasant. My mom uses snap traps and we get a good deal of mice that way, though I always prefer trying Havahart traps first. (Havahart trap worked for our squirrel...not sure they even make them for mice.) The only issue with poison is making sure critters you like don't eat it. We've stayed away because, frankly, we have a not-so-bright dog :)

[kcarp.livejournal.com]

Havaharts w/ peanut butter on corn tortillas worked great for our squirrels. Our next solution would have been the ultrasonic thingy that apparently does not bug cats or dogs but drives rodential thingies insane and away.

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

Kittens.

Borrow kittens!

[sapphorlando.livejournal.com]

Glue traps are horrifyingly cruel. I don't know how mouse poison works, but rat poison is kind of sick, too. Snap traps are barbaric, but at least they're quick, if they work right. (If they don't, not so quick.)

I know all the cat people will say cat, and that's my instinct, too, but cats are even less humane than snap traps. About the best you can say is that it's 'natural,' but it's not really so much, when you think about it. In the wild, rodents have much more chance to get away.

So, I'd go with the have-a-heart, if you can do it. Then just release the critter outside, and let G-d take over its fate.

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

I've been using the extra-small Havahart trap. The larger traps usually have too large wide a gap between the side of the trap and the doors.

For bait, I use a quarter of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. It works great, but you have to remember to not eat the entire peanut butter cup when nibbling it down to 1/4.

snap traps

[bigbrotherinlaw.livejournal.com]

You've dealt with the full variety of outputs a small child can produce, and I suspect you've been the recipient of a feline offering or three in the past. Snap trap results are much less messy than either of these. They are cheap, simple to use, and reasonably safe for the rest of you.

Poison is useful in our cabins in the woods where:
a) we want to discourage mice from trying to find shelter and food inside.
b) no one is around for weeks at a time to empty traps.
c) there are no pets or small children around who might mistake the poison for something good to eat.
d) on average the mice will die somewhere with enough ventilation that we won't care about whatever smell has lingered by the time we get there.

[mhaille.livejournal.com]

We are using the ultrasonic thingie, and the smice have not come back (to our apartment, anyway.)
Of course we also put out poison bait and locked our munchables up in glass containers at the same time. The infestation seems to move from floor to floor regularly, and hasn't come back to us.

[mitchy.livejournal.com]

I hate killing field mice so always use humane traps, baited with peanut butter, as several commentators above me have mentioned. It really does work. You do have to be willing to take the mice a good distance away though.

Here's a pic of the last lil' squeaker I caught in a humane trap :)

[auspeople.livejournal.com]

DO NOT use poison. It's nasty and the death is horrific. We used poison on a mouse/rat that was just cutest little thing in terms of making its presence known... we'd find just the littlest bites chewed out of food left on the counter overnight. He was partial to brownies. Anyway, landlord put out poison, and three days we find blood tracks in the living room and the poor crazed beast under our couch. The landlord couldn't find it when we called them. Then greeneyes_rpi who shared a wall with us, started complaining of an odor. Poor thing had died behind her stove.

If you can do humane traps, PLEASE go that route.

[greeneyes-rpi.livejournal.com]

We did the catch and release trap for the mouse we had in Michigan. It took about 30 seconds for the thing to catch our mouse. (Honestly, we had just walked out of the kitchen when we heard the ca-THUNK of the trap, and we thought we had mis-set it. Nope -- we had our mouse.) The thing was so freaking adorable I almost kept it as a pet.

We loaned the trap to drelmo for his infestation many years ago and it seemed to work just fine, although it does occasionally kill the mouse by accident. I don't recall the kill ratio, but drelmo or drangelo might.

[kay-taylor.livejournal.com]

Mouse scarer device! I have one and it worked wonders on the last house. You plug it into an electrical socket and it sends out high pitched squeals (too high pitched for humans to hear) and terrifies the hell out of them. It works best one per room, so if you have a socket in the kitchen, that's a good idea. Also, it works by sound waves, so it should be in a fairly prominent position and not behind a cupboard or anything. But, it avoids the need for traps and is ultra low-maintenance.

[kay-taylor.livejournal.com]

Also, I think these are safe for kitties (some brands are, anyway) as it just annoys rodents - so no good if you have gerbils, hamsters, etc etc.

I second everyone else that glue traps are terrible (I just find them too cruel for words - the high pitched fear squeaking is heartbreaking) and poison does create a "dead mouse in walls!" risk. If you're going to go down the trap route, snap traps are easy, quick and humane.

[eternaleponine.livejournal.com]

I don't have pet rats anymore, so nothing pet-like to drive crazy.

I actually have a pretty good catch rate, for a human, but we knew it'd gotten out of hand when the mouse was running around inside the stove top.

[ktpinto.livejournal.com]

I have to use no-kill traps. It wasn't the mouse's fault that they wound up in my apartment (it was because the woman downstairs and her kids were friggin' slobs). I had caught two mice (not rats... rats are different demons completely) in there, and took them away to set them free.

I had used a glue trap once when I lived upstate, and hearing that poor field mouse cry almost killed me. I had to have the ex put the thing out of it's misery.

If I HAD to kill it (because in some areas, you can't drive a mile away to let the mice go) a snap trap is probably the best. I don't know how the poison goes.